Yours Chimerically

Valentine's Special: Broken

If broken rocks and glass and things

Can be the shimmering bed of oceans

Then I can be like strings for your fingers

And you can make me lovely

If the dawn is drowned by shadows

And the water is dark like the sand, like the birds, like the trees, like the air

I can color your bland evenings

While we remember what it was to drink sun rays by the river together

We have been weathered by many storms

Into a subservient mortal romance

And instead of bursting through the cracks

Of the rocks when we crashed

We lost momentum

Watered down

Until our tears surrounded us like a stillborn stream

But I beg you to unearth the divine love

That can set us ablaze again.

Goodbyes and Kind Things Like That

Today I taught my first college class for the last time. Towards the end of the session, something weird happened. An outlandish desire to hold on to these 20something’s who wouldn’t be able to tell anyone anything about me, in whose faces I saw not names, but percentages. As they left, they turned in their papers, gave me the 5-second-American-smile and walked away. In a moment of spontaneity, I wondered if I should bar the door with my body and demand hugs, against everything in the professional conduct code. I looked down, gathering papers, and marveled over the end of things, why it means so much.

For Better or Worse (Part 4 - The End)

Inside the car, John had successfully escaped his airbag and was frantically ripping Isa's away from her face. Tears began to fall from her eyes, and he looked at her and muttered apologies, wiping them. He reached for her door handle, pushed it open and turned back to her. "I'll come get you out, just cover your face, OK? OK?"

She nodded. It took a little more effort to get his door open, and then John ran to the other side of the car and carried Isa out as carefully as he could.

"I'm alright. I can walk John, I'm alright." She said reaching for his face and feeling its features as if to make sure that they were all intact.

He set her down. "I'm... babe I'm so sorry..."

"Don't," she cut him off, "don't say anything.

For Better or Worse (Part 3)

That was when John began to sleep in Modou's old room. He sat on the bed looking at his son's old textbooks and sighed, missing him. He got out his cell phone and started to text him "I haven't heard from you in a while. Hope you're doing well in school. Stay away from those American women, you know Ma gets jealous!" He shut and locked the door and lay on the twin bed, listening to the noise of the springs. He remembered the days he could joke with his wife about her obsessive love for their son. He thought for the first time about divorce. He wished he could just be angry and beat her, but he knew better. He knew that something inside her had changed, that something had altered, and that his wife was in there somewhere. No matter how angry he was, he couldn't bring himself to let her down.

His phone vibrated, and he picked up his son's call in a low hoarse voice.

For Better or Worse (Part 2)

That night in bed, "I think we should keep the house, John" she said softly.

"I know, I agree, it doesn't make sense to ever sell property, but it's Pa's decision Isa" He moved close to her and laid an arm along her body.

 "So you didn't say anything then?"

"I told them what I thought and then I left it alone." He hoped she would get the hint without his having to tell her to mind her business. She was silent, he exhaled. "Since when did it matter so much to you what we did with Old Derelict anyway?" He moved a little closer.

She laughed. "I don't know, I guess it just doesn't make sense, his decision. So I don't get why we're sticking with it."

He reached for her shoulder, and watched the top of it glisten in the dimly lit room.

For Better or Worse (Part 1)

"Is this love, is this love, is this love, is this love that I'm feelin'..." Bob Marley crooned in the taxi as Isa fumbled through her purse for a 25 dalasi note for the driver. "Jerrejef" thank you, she muttered, not bothering to count her change as she stepped out of the taxi and onto the sunny afternoon that lay ahead of her. It was a little after one in the afternoon and because it was Friday, everyone had gotten off early for the Muslim prayers. No prayers to offer, Isa considered what she would make for lunch, and then what she would make for dinner. She meticulously thought through the menus in her mind, not allowing herself to envision the end result - chicken stew on white rice - until she had mentally prepared it all, from the skinning of the pale pink chicken down to the chopping of the onions.

Her thoughts always left her in a trancelike state.

Even Darkness Loves the Sun

You uncover me every time you come around

And when you leave night wraps around me

Insufficient

Like a cold, thin blanket in the winter

Have all my attempts been to rid myself of your bright beams

Shining little golden bullets through my veils

Keeping me vulnerable and powerless against your fiery glare.

I squint and retreat at your dazzling exterior

Embracing love's blindness

Knowing that you will not return my sentiments

And that your glory is to upstage me.

In all honesty

We would make an unharmonious pair,

Me as I am, and you, so unreasonably shiny

But in spite of your laser precision highlighting all my weaknesses

 I still need to see you

You see, I need you to see.

On the Unwarranted Jadedness of Privileged Young People

Something is wrong. Teens and young adults troll around social networking websites and mope through life, not in the glorious joy of youth, but with a dark cloud hanging over them. They describe themselves as alone and misunderstood, and one would almost think it was a front - a tool to seek attention, until one looked at suicide rates. Is there any good reason why at the prime of life, a mentally stable young person, with very easily diagnose-able problems would be conned into thinking that their life is so bad that they need to end it?

I won't pretend to know why our seemingly perfect lives are marked with purposeless sadness and unnecessary depression, but permit me to offer some ideas.

1. It's cool to be miserable. We're always complaining about something. Something always gets on our nerves. Everyone has their special little irritation and loves to flaunt it.

A(lone)ly Day

I can't say they never told me to leave it alone

That literature was for aged men and love for the mature

To pursue the simpler things

Dance maybe

Or song

But I wanted art in my life

So I poured my heart into stanzas

And I fell in love with a poem.

Red Earth (On Going Home)

I'm not sure what I expected.

I just didn't know that earth could be so red.

I wanted to taste the air again and again. Stepping onto the soil I felt its texture against my feet -deep red gravel, as if the earth had been sun-burnt. And I couldn't fathom how earth could be so red. The sky was lined with tall grey offices contrasting with the dirty brown beggars that sat at their feet. I stared in sad disbelief at a little girl who ran up to me with cupped hands and a bag of jingling coins of more value in music than in trade swinging from her waist. My instincts told me that the only thing that stopped our blood from flowing together was our skin. My stride was in step with this place. I walked in city stores, street corners, village alleys and treacherous man-made bridges, and when no one was looking, I stooped down to sink my hands into the red earth. To get a feel for my motherland. I reached down deep to find the heartbeat of the place.